Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I started compiling this list over on the site MyAnimeList, which has a cool community called "The Alternative Manga Club" that I've been posting on. Since it's a bit hard to comment on that thread without being registered, I decided to move it here. Please help fill in details below!

I'm trying to compile a chronological list (by publication date) of very early manga from Japan published in English. Specifically, I wanna list everything that was translated and published in America (or in bilingual editions in Japan, in Europe, etc) prior to the big explosion at the end of the 80s by Viz and Dark Horse, etc.

+ Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction
Published by Kodansha International
Features: 38 page manga by Michio Hasauchi called "Japan's Junglest Day."

+ Grey by Yoshihisa Tagami, published by Viz [eBay]
+ Lost Continent by Akihiro Yamada, published by Eclipse [eBay]
+ Hotel Harbour View by Natsuo Sekikawa & Jiro Taniguchi, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ 2001 Nights by Yukinobu Hoshino, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ Saber Tiger by Yukinobu Hoshino, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ Shion Blade of the Minstrel by Yu Kinutani, published by Viz [eBay]
+ Cobra by Buichi Terasawa, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ Horobi, published by Viz [MyComicShop]
+ What's Michael by Makoto Kobayashi, published by Eclipse [MyComicShop]

NEEDS TO BE CONFIRMED/DATED
MANGA 1984
- Front cover by Hajime Sorayama
- Two Warriors by Hiroshi Hirata
- Down Time by Yosuke Tamori
- The Mask of the Red Dwarf Star by Yukinori Hoshino
- Olai Portfolio by Noriyoshi Olai (illustrations)
- Watermelon Messiah by Otomo Katsuhiro (wordless)
- Midsummer Night's Dream by Lee Marrs & Keizo Miyanishi
- The Great Ten by Noboru Miyama
- Schizophrenia by Youji Fukuyama
- The Promise by Masaichi Mukaide
- Cat in Animation by Masayuki Wako (wordless)
- Back cover: Hiroshi Hirata
This book was published in Japan and exported to America. This 88 page book contains color and B&W entries.Complete analysis and descriptions by Job on the Savage Critic blog

1977: Star*Reach #7 includes a story by Satoshi Hirota/Masaichi Mukaide

Ostensibly, the first English "Manga" was Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama's "The Four Immigrants" comics, created in the 1920s while he was living in the United States. These comics were translated by Frederik Schodt and published by Stone Bridge Press in 1998Further reading on Fred Schodt's site

MORE READING:
+ "Manga: Another SF/F Trend Missed by SF/F?" by Cynthia Ward (published in Locas Online)
Cynthia states in this article (among other great tidbits):Eclipse/Viz followed these titles with several SF manga (Appleseed, Cyber 7, Cosmo Police Justy, Dominion, and Xenon: Heavy Metal Warrior).

+ The Age of Fake Manga - a fantastic collection of American comics created in the 80s that mimicked the style of manga, including: Ninja Funnies, The Fat Ninja, Eagle (a ninja comic unrelated to the Sawaguchi political manga), Shuriken, Mecha, Gigantor & Speed Racer remakes, Metal Bikini, and Rion 2990. CHECK THIS OUT!

Mouly: We did go see all of those people while we were in Tokyo in 1983, so we managed to find out about them even before we went... We also very very early on made contact with Kosei Ono... Kosei Ono is a book critic, and a writer, and a scholar of comics and he's the one who put us in touch with Tsuge and, a really smart guy. So we basically made connections with the right people.

It's the only time that Tsuge published outside of Japan. He just won't allow it. He let it happen with a book that just came out in France this year, ten years later. It was basically because Kosei Ono vouched for us, and Tsuge gave us permission for "Red Flowers." And of course we had to do it as an insert. He didn't want it blown up in Raw, and he liked the idea that it would have its own format, that he would be presented. The reason that he doesn't want to be published anywhere else is that he contends, and I can see, if you read his books you can understand what he means, that if you truly want to understand his work, you have to go move to Japan, learn Japanese, and then you can understand his books.

Karasik: The translations that I did of Tsuge's remarkable tales remain the Raw work of which I am proudest. My close pal, Akira Satake, who is one of the best banjo players in the world and quickly becoming one of the best ceramicists, as well, was familiar with Tsuge's work and would do a rough translation of the story. Because he and I are so close, even though I do not understand Japanese, I was able to take his translations into vernacular English while retain what I believe and hope is the intonation and intention of Tsuge's original work. Footnoting the "Red Flowers" was Art's bright idea. It gave us a way of explaining the sound-effects, inflection and subtleties inherent in the original Japanese which would be lost to Western readers.

Mouly: It turned out that Tsuge loved the idea of having footnotes, we loved the idea of having footnotes. It was nice, we liked the idea of a comic strip with footnotes. It slows down the reading, which was the same project that we had as well.

PLEASE ADD ANY ADDITIONS IN THE COMMENTS AND I'LL UPDATE THIS POST! Adding images today.

@Rick: Dude!!! What is this business? I'd never heard of this comic but it looks oddly amazing. This can be part of a parallel effort: First OEL manga ! I think this might win for being before Toren Smith's DIRTY PAIR.

Illegal Tatsumi book published by a legitimate publisher! Translated from Spanish.Most of the stuff has been reprinted in the more recent books, but there was an insane story about a dead baby in a sewer with a different art style that I don't think has been seen in English otherwise?I lent my copy to a coworker and never got it back!

@Azraelito: Thanks for the suggestions! I'll track those down on eBay and add them to the list. It gets really complicated around 1990 as the first boom starts-- thanks for your earlier help with the pre-90s magazine publications.

@Julia: Thanks! I dunno about 2001 Nights, but Grey was first published in Spring of 1990 so it definitely counts as early in the chronology. Please keep adding suggestions as you think of them :)

Mangajin which started in 1990 (I think, my first issue is v1 #6 which is dated 12-90), had several titles to help teach Japanese. They started serializing the original Galaxy Express 999 in v1 #6. Same issue also has chapters from Pocket Story by Mori Masayuki, Tanaka-kun by Tanaka Hiroshi, and Dai-Tokyo Binbo Seikatsu Manyuaru. I have more issues if you're interested.

@phoenix.fire: Oh nice, I had totally forgotten about Mangajin though now i remember it pretty fondly from later in the '90s. I'd be interested in adding items from its first year of publishing (1990) to this list.

Good catch on Captain Harlock! I didn't realize it was (like Robotech) a "tribute" remake by americans and not a licensed title first published in Japan. Updating accordingly!

There's a Mazinger manga from 1988 published by First Publishing. It was apparently created for the American market, but it was drawn by Go Nagai and translated from Japanese, so I don't know if you want to add that or not. It's pretty rad.

Also... oops, a bit later than I thought, but how about the Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past manga drawn by Shotaro Ishinomori? Ran in Nintendo Power in 1992, then was collected in 1993. It was created for the American market, again, and it's a bit after what you have here, but it might be suitably obscure.

Dunno how precise you wanted to be, but the dates in the Viz Spectrum editions are: Saber Tiger May '91, Shion September '90, and Hotel Harbor View October '90. Xenon is also a Eclipse/Viz comic (you can see the Viz logo in the lower right corner on the covers at MCS). The collections are straight-up Viz Top graphic novels, or at least the fourth one from 1992 is.

My roommate has a ton of Star Reach comics, I'll dig through them to see if I can find that 1977 story you mentioned.

This is an amazing list, by the way, and that's an incredibly interesting anecdote about Tsuge at the bottom. Thanks for going to the trouble of compiling all this. I'm really interested in old, obscure manga published in English, and there's a number of things here I'm going to have to pick up.

@Connie: Thanks for all those great additions and tidbits! I'm gonna do some legwork now and find those listings and update the page accordingly :)

Please report back any other cool findings!!

It sounds like our interests are cut from the same cloth-- My plan is with another 5-6 hours of research this post/page can turn into a complete resource for everything related to the first decade of Manga publishing in English!

Couple more from Viz when they were Viz Communications. Fire Tripper and Laughing Target as well as Lum came out as comics in 1989-90. I also remember Mermaid Forest coming out after Fire Tripper and Laughing Target. The last two can be found on eBay.

@fluffyduck: Thanks for that intel! Good to know about 2001 Nights-- I think mid-to-late '90s is more recent than I'm going for in this list... there's so much cool stuff coming out around that time that I will defer to Jason Thompson's Manga: The Ultimate Guide for those titles. But keep me posted if you think of stuff from that era, I just updated the list.

@victorm: Thanks!! I will add that first issue of Cheval Noir. I was just looking at the covers on eBay last night and thinking about trying to buy some of those books. So many interesting artists from the late-80s and early-90s.

HEY ALL! So I just took my lunch break to go to Book Buyers near my office. It's a silicon valley used book shop, which has a TON of manga tankobon, and early Viz issues. A certain Viz editor's father used to live & work near the shop, so gems from Viz history show up all the time-- like the entire run of PULP for a buck an issue, etc.

I just stopped by and, using this list as my guide, found some GEMS. Issues were .95 cents and the TPBs were 2 bucks (I know):

+ Rumic World #1: Fire Tripper

+ Grey #1

+ Mai the Psychic Girl #1-6, featuring 3 essays in a series called "The Manga Story" by Fred Patten, Fredrik Schodt, and James Hudnall

"The Spider Thread." Inspired by Atutagama's short story. Story and art by Masaich Mukaide.

http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=552761

Imagine number 4

The Awakening of Tamaki, a b&w Asian fantasy written by Lee Marrs with art by Masaichi Mukaide

http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=552761

Check this one please, apart from the manga story. It has a story written by Paul Levitz(publisher of dc) and Steve Ditko, that is really great!!!

Imagine 6

"Salvation" a 2 page, humor/religious story by M. Mukaide;

http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=552761

The three stories are really nice, the art is incredible! Mike Friedrich is also the responsible for the book of manga that metroscope published. He was really an avant garde publisher, when no one was ever thinking of japanese authors, he decided to publish things!! Very cool!! If I found the interview were he explains things, I will post it!

@Azraelito: Thanks for these great additions. I wasn't familiar with Imagine before this--- As you can tell, European-inspired anthologies from the late-70s/early-80s is a big blind spot in my comics education, so this has been great for me to learn! I spent some time finding issues of the UK anthology TABOO last year (where Charles Burns, Jodorowsky, FROM HELL were published) but never this or EPIC before this conversation started.

I'm gonna try to slowly order and track down these things!

I just added one more to the list Star*Reach #7 with confirmed Mukaide story. In the bibliography I linked to there you can see that person claiming that story as the first even manga in english :)

Ja ok, there are a lot of incredible anthologies that you must read!! Epic Illustrated is a great one to start!

Taboo is very difficul to find and very expensive. The only number I would buy is the one were there is an interview to jodorowsky and he is talking about the dune movie. There is art of moebius that is incredible. There are numbers with neil gaiman and michael zulli doing sweeney todd. There is stuff from bissette, veitch, eddie campbell and others!!

the checklist

http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Richard%20Arndt/Taboo.htm

more things!!

The new comics anthology published by collier books, has the first story of suehiro maruo and it is from 1991.

Food comics 1 of educomics has a story done by akira narita without sex!!

Apart from this, I have found something very cool. They released a limited book of shigeru mizuki in english that included five great stories of him. This one was never sold publicly. It was in 1993, I know it doesnt have anything with this, but the info was cool!

Mangajin are 69 numbers, I dont have the checklist or the exact date of release!!

And that is all, I made an effort and keep my eyes open. Now I am really going to sleep!

Oh yeah, Taboo-- i was really obsessed with it a few years ago, and I have issues 2-6. My girlfriend bought me a few copies at a science fiction writer's convention, and i found another few a used shop. It's not exactly my kind of thing, but I was really happy to see the Moebius stuff and a few shorts by Charles Burns that I scanned and xeroxed to decorate my wall :)

Which Maruo comic is in New Comics Anthology? It's his Michael Jackson "BAD" satire comic? That one is originally in New National Kid-- it's so stupid!!! Haha, but it's cool to see Maruo's first publication in English.

I am gonna read all the issues of EPIC I found tonight. I'm looking forward to it, especially the Go Nagai stuff. There is an early edition of Devilman that was released in English-- I think maybe a bilingual edition in Japan? I need to look it up again.

Thanks for the research help--it's like nerd wikipedia up in here. I'm gonna start digging around about that Food Comic from educomics tomorrow. Evan used to have a subscription to Mangajin, I think he has all the old issues back home somewhere.

The funniest thing I found is the manga-inspired ninja comic SHURIKEN, from Victory Press in 1986. it is so shitty looking, but it's really heartfelt and sweet. There is a nice essay in the front by the creator about how much he loves Tezuka and Leiji Matsuomoto-- i'll scan it and post it before I leave for Japan next week.

I can vaguely remember a Black Magic M-66 comic that I thought was from Dark Horse with a black cover and silver embossed figure of the female robot that was available around 1990, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

hich Maruo comic is in New Comics Anthology? It's his Michael Jackson "BAD" satire comic? That one is originally in New National Kid-- it's so stupid!!! Haha, but it's cool to see Maruo's first publication in English.

I am gonna read all the issues of EPIC I found tonight. I'm looking forward to it, especially the Go Nagai stuff.

Thanks for your list. I'm glad to see Akira Narita's appearance in _Food Comix_ remembered by Azraelito in this thread("When Socrates Drinks, everybody drinks!," by Akira NARITA with Fred Schodt and Leonard Rifas,_Food Comix/cs_, EduComics, San Francisco, 1980.)My one-person company EduComics also attempted to serialize Keiji Nakazawa's _Barefoot Gen_ in comic book format under the title _Gen of Hiroshima_. Gen of Hiroshima #1appeared in January, 1980; Gen of Hiroshima #2, appeared in April, 1981.

@Leonard: Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by this thread! I have now added the Nakata reference from Food Comix!

Many thanks for all your contributions via EduComics in pioneering the English releases of these comics :) I don't believe we've met, but were both in attendance last year or so of the event where Fred was awarded the honor by the Japanese government at the Consulate?

Last Gasp put out a comic called "Cannibal Romance" in 1986. It has mostly underground cartoonists except for the very first story, which is eight-page short called "Warashi." The creator for that one is a "Mr. Tero."

@HARUKA: The date listed here is from the Barefoot Gen copy I have, and matches with Fred Patten's timeline in Watching Anime, Reading Manga: http://www.samehat.com/2008/06/first-american-edition-of-japanese.html

If there is an earlier edition, I'd love to confirm it (and get a copy myself)

That "condensed first english volume of Barefoot Gen" sounds like the black and white sampler pamphlet that Project Gen put together to help them find an English-language publisher. That's how I discovered _Barefoot Gen_. I never owned a copy (or saw more than one of them), but it remains possible that my photocopy of that booklet may surface some day.

Hello as part of my 80's and 90's UK anime fandom Blog, I have been posting what is left from my own collection of translated manga (http://anime-nostalgia-facility.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/manga-in-80s.html ) & http://anime-nostalgia-facility.blogspot.co.uk I have founf sites like www.mycomicshop.com DO NOT have the correct dates, is is best to hunt down this old Manga for the dates and you can find dated Addverts too!! May I Add your blog to my "Well worth a look"links?? Bye for now Carlo Bernhardi

In 1991 Kodansha International published Monkey Brain Sushi: New Tastes in Japanese Fiction, edited by Alfred Birnbaum (ISBN: 4-7700-1543-7). Included were stories by Haruki Murakami, Osamu Hashimoto, Masahiko Shimada, Genichiro Takahashi and Amy Yamada as well as a 38 page manga by Michio Hasauchi called "Japan's Junglest Day."